Flying Laboratories

Saturday (10/26) looks like another beautiful day in Atlanta, so if you're game to get outside early to enjoy the gorgeous weather and stretch your legs, please join me for the Holy Halloween 5K & 1 Mile Fun Walk/Run supporting vulnerable and at-risk children served through the impactful programs at Catholic Charities Atlanta
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https://runsignup.com/Race/GA/Atlanta/holyhalloween?raceRefCode=TbvKjj05

As a sponsor, I have a special discount code, so feel free to FB message me :)

If only we're brave enough to be it

My favorite line from the poem by Amanda Gorman today: “We lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us.” She is amazing.

Do you know a servant leader who wants to grow professionally and spiritually by transforming lives and making a difference in his/her community? Consider nominating them (or YOU!) for the Catholic Charities Atlanta Leadership Class 2020-21... we're accepting applications now!

Leadership Class • Catholic Charities Atlanta “The biggest strength of this program is that there were a lot of very impressive leaders who we were exposed to, and that we were able to get access to so many unique insights and perspectives from all these people.” – Julian, Fairburn GA

Coaching can truly be transformative for the spirit, body and mind

The Neuroscience of Good Coaching New research suggests how to coach—and be coached—more effectively.

Happy Women's Entrepreneurship Day to all the amazing women entrepreneurs I've taught and coached at J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University - with Amy Blankenship Pedersen

It’s ! We want to know who you’re celebrating! Tag a Georgia State University or who we should know about!
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MD/DC/VA folks... check out this great Scrum @ Scale meetup featuring JJ Sutherland and lead by my fellow CTI Leadership colleague, Catherine N'Komba

DC Scrum at Scale (Vienna, VA) Looking for another way to scale your Agile practices? Please join us and explore the Scrum at Scale method. Pioneered by Jeff Sutherland and formally released in the Spring of 2018, this approach to

Demo Day 2018 at with these amazing student entrepreneurs from Georgia State University cheering on my friends from BigTeam

"Walk With Me" Leadership Walking Retreat 2018... what a day creating time and space to connect with our inner leaders! Couldn't have asked for a better metaphor than being greeted by a turtle on our trail - with Heather Pirie and Jen Pedersen Daniels

Panther professor pride! Georgia State University is ranked the second most innovative university in the nation and second in the country for its commitment to undergraduate teaching in the 2019 Best Colleges edition of U.S. News and World Report. That's !

Georgia State Rises To No. 2 In Nation In U.S. News Innovation, Commitment To Teaching Rankings - News Hub - Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, College of Arts and Sciences, College of Education and Human Development, College of Law, College... Georgia State University is ranked the second most innovative university in the nation and second in the country for its commitment to undergraduate teaching in the 2019 Best Colleges edition of U.S. News & World Report magazine.

Feeling energized by all the leaders I met this morning in the ACG Atlanta Women's Forum who share my passion for driving growth and transformation in the middle market

Networking Breakfast with the ACG Atlanta Women's Forum | ACG Atlanta Share: Image Event Details When: August 29, 2018 7:30 AM - 9:30 AM EDT Where: Location Name Southern Art Location Address 3315 Peachtree Road NortheastAtlanta, GA 30326United States Register Now Add to Calendar Overview Body Join the Women's Forum committee for a networking breakfast on August 29th....

How about a day to connect with your inner leader? Join me and fellow leadership coach, Heather Pirie, for a special event: Walk with Me - Leadership Walking Retreat on Saturday, September 22nd from 10am-4pm at the Gwinnett Environmental & Heritage Center in Buford, GA. To learn more, check out:

Walk With Me - Leadership Walking Retreat for Women Walk with me! This special one day walking retreat at the Gwinnett Environmental & Heritage Center in Buford, GA (~35 miles northeast of Atlanta) is a beautiful way to get in touch with your inner leader. Through a series of walks and workshops, you will feel restored and open to new possibilities i...

She gave us a big clue when she named her plane the “Flying Laboratory” but Amelia Earhart was also pretty outspoken about her love for experimenting so she could always be trying new things. I, too, had a similar passion but as I got older and became more ingrained in Corporate America, I started to bring out those qualities less and less. My career was all about strategizing, planning, executing and hitting the numbers… there wasn’t a lot of room for experimenting and trying new things. But in hindsight, there shouldn’t have been room for shareholders to invest in high cost, multi-year initiatives that were based in several untested assumptions, most of which weren’t accurate or the circumstances had changed over the course of the projects such that those assumptions were no longer true. I can only imagine the millions upon millions of dollars that could have been saved with just a little more infusion of entrepreneurial principles that would have encouraged more testing and learning to validate those key assumptions before making such huge investments.

My mindset shifted around 2013 when I learned about a concept that GE had started to embrace called “FastWorks” which is based upon lean entrepreneurial principles advocated by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup. I should have connected the dots earlier being a startup founder myself with Slimpressions®, but I worked so diligently to keep my corporate world and startup life separate that I simply couldn’t fathom how a big corporation could appreciate, adopt and benefit from the basic approaches I'd been utilizing as a bootstrapped entrepreneur. I’m glad someone had the courage to challenge the status quo at GE with FastWorks. That awakened me to something very impactful that was right in front of me all along.

I’ve since become a huge advocate for intrapreneurship... bringing entrepreneurial principles, mindsets and behaviors into the corporate world. I particularly love working with growth-focused middle market firms (~$50MM - $2B revenues) who have the vision, commitment and agility to accelerate growth by embracing their startup roots. Those approaches are now the cornerstones from which I coach executives and functional leaders, how I advise organizations in growth strategies and change leadership, and how I engage teams with innovative and engaging experiential workshops.

And infusing my coaching, advising and leading with all those entrepreneurial principles makes it a whole lot more fun than doing those things the old traditional way!

Amelia thought so as well…

“Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.”

Stay tuned for more leadership lessons we can all learn and embrace from Amelia Earhart.